BattleBots: Champions

Just saw episode 1, it was bonkers. Mechanical mayhem all over the battle box. Nice format. All entries are by invitation, no rookies or goofy novelty bots. Helluva lot of fun so far.

...with the reviewers who have gotten more and more disappointed with the formats that have evolved .. Giant Nut, Silver Bolt, Bounty Hunter, etc. I can't keep track. I still record three hours or so of content every Thursday but would never watch it live. With a max of four fights an hour, that makes 12 minutes of action, less with knockouts, and the efforts to fill the remaining time with a million commercials and stupid " fight, fight, fight,'" screaming from the "fans" makes it worse.

Are these teams competing to win money? Who sponsors them? A little backstory on competitors would be interesting. More time showing working on repairs in the pits. How much does it cost to field a bot? Other human interest things to break up the show. And get rid of the interminable announcements. From the minute Farouk gets the mike to the start of the fight is 3-4 minutes, plus 6 more minutes of commercial time. And always the same. Makes it easy to fast forward and i guess the sponsors are aware nobody will ever see their stuff.

What's the point of this new tournament and trophy? It's the same bots, the same rules. If you are going to have a new tournament, DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT!!! Put all 8 bots in the box at the same time or remove some of the restrictions they have during the regular Battlebots tournament. I don't need to see the same lame fodder bots like the horrible Smeeeeeee in another tournament. Thumbs waaaaaaay down.

Unless this program is recorded so I can fast forward through all of the nonsensical filler crammed into every episode. If the ridiculous team mugging for the camera performance antics, Faruq the annoying announcer, the idiotic "Bot Whisperer", audience shots with their obviously supplied stupid signs and chants and Chris and Kenny's attempt at engaging banter were eliminated, each of the 2 hr. Episodes would be hard pressed to fill out 30 minutes of airtime.

There also needs to be some newer robots allowed into the competition. As the other reviewer pointed out, watching virtually the same robots in every episode gets old pretty fast. Discovery+ really should seriously consider reducing the run time of this show drastically. People tune in for the robots destroying one another, not any of the other nonsense I've pointed to.